'No favours given': Why Portsmouth boss refuses to believe October finally offers fixture respite ahead of Stoke trip

Although he refuses to acknowledge that October offers considerably more favourable opposition in comparison.

The unfortunate Blues have faced six of the top eight plus Luton so far, leaving them positioned second from bottom with four points.

At least October represents a more encouraging schedule, with four of the bottom eight, in addition to fellow League One promotion side Oxford United.

First of the month is a Wednesday night trip to Stoke, who are two points ahead and already on their second manager of the campaign following the appointment of Narcis Pelach.

But Mousinho doesn’t foresee any downturn in the quality of opponents during what is surely a pivotal month for Pompey.

He told The News: ‘We always knew it was going to be a difficult patch and a difficult spell. People might now say the fixture list looks different, but, as far as I’m concerned, every game in the Championship is really, really difficult. Stoke will be right at it, there will be no favours given by them.

‘I think we’ve done okay so far, there have been some things I’ve been pleased with. What is frustrating is we’ve been in most of the games, we have competed, but haven’t come away with as much as we should have.

‘Even if you look at Leeds and Middlesbrough, we are winning going into injury time and came away with draws. We are drawing with Burnley going into injury time and came away with a loss.

‘The performances have been okay in patches, but we need to defend better, we need to score a lot more. The best thing about the side at the moment is they have improved game-on-game over the last three games.

‘It always made me chuckle when people talked about the first seven fixtures being really tough and our eighth being Stoke away. Well, in my book, that is right up there with difficult fixtures in the Championship calendar.

‘Regardless of who we play, we wanted to win against Sheffield United, we wanted to come away from that game with three points, which we didn’t quite manage. Even though it was against a side chasing promotion and in the Premier League last year, we want to keep doing that.

‘We pushed Luton really close, we pushed Middlesbrough and Leeds really close, and Burnley. We must make sure we do that with every side we play, we have to pick up points regardless of who it‘s against.’

In addition to Stoke, Pompey entertain Oxford (October 5) and Sheffield Wednesday (October 25) and travel to QPR (October 19) and rock-bottom Cardiff (October 22).

With the possible exception of Oxford at present, all can currently be considered relegation rivals to remain in the Championship.

Mousinho added: ‘Probably people wouldn’t have expected us to pick up anything from those seven games, yet we have picked up four and could have picked up five more.

‘Yet we’re in the bottom two, we haven't got enough points, but we are also realistic that now we need to start picking up points.’